Sunday, February 27, 2011

Bonnie Prince Billy & The Cairo Gang have released a 10" vinyl (and mp3) (Domino 2011), to help Edge Outreach, make clean water accessible to folks in Haiti.
You will get the two fine songs "Island Brothers" and "New Wonder", but you should consider buying this record, even if this music is not your cup of tea.
And everybody should have at least one 10" in their collection anyway!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

If you are not too far from Bergen 22 - 26 March, please note that the Borealis 2011 festival is happening at that time. Borealis is a festival dedicated to contemporary music, noise and sound art, and the theme of the year is "tripping"! The organizers tell us that tripping is also something you may do without chemical substances, so they will travel to Odda for one day to prove it! Far out!

The program was released yesterday (25 February) at one of the festival´s "satelite events", the exhibition "Reading Dante III" by Joan Jonas who also gave a lecture before the exhibition opening.

Please check out the program yourselves, but let me point you towards sax man Kjetil Møster, who will play at another satelite event 2 March, Espen Sommer Eide (Pohonophani) will play with Pierre Bastien and Tanya Orning will play a new piece for cello by Maja Ratkje.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Check out the videos "Heartland" and "The Death of Actaeon", made by the artist duo gordon & mary with music by Robert Wyatt.

I asked Marissa Weatherhead (mary - I suppose) about the videos, and she says they make large paintings/pictures and wanted videos to help the viewers "see" the paintings, but that the videos ended up being works in their own right.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Molde International Jazz Festival is happening 18 - 23 July, and today the the first list of artists was known.Dave Holland, who has been visting the festival six times already, is going to be Artist In Residence. Supersilent will play with Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones, like they did at the Punkt festival in Kristiansand (Norway) in 2010 (picture) and Stian Westerhus will perform with quite a few of Norway´s finest!
More artists over at Moldejazz (in Norwegian), and this is only the beginning!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

You may now pre-order old Soft Machine material from Amazon. "Turns On" volum 1 and 2 are released again 7 March on Evangaline. They look just like the ones that were released in 2001 (Voiceprint).
The band is mainly Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Kevin Ayers, with Daevid Allen on some tracks on volume 1 (according to ProgArchives, I do not own these albums yet).

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Espen Sommer Eide and Sigbjørn Apeland are touring Japan these days. Here is a video, that according to the live dates on Sommer Eide´s blog, was recorded in Kyoto (17 February 2011).

Let me also remind you about Apeland´s album "Glossolalia" and Sommer Eide´s project Phonophani´s "Kreken".
And check this picture from Osaka. Apeland takes no chances when it comes to harmonium playing and hygiene!

Monday, February 21, 2011

June Tabor´s new album should be in all record stores and streaming services today. "Ashore" (Topic 2011) is a collection of songs about life, on and near the ocean.
Regular readers of this blog will be happy (I believe!) to hear June Tabor do a cover of Elvis Costello´s "Shipbuilding", perhaps better known in Robert Wyatt´s version. Tabor is only accompanied by piano, and the lyrics stand out perfectly. A beauty of a cover, just as necessary as Costello´s and Wyatt´s interpretations.
On "Ashore" we get children´s songs, traditional folk songs, and even a couple of songs she already recorded with others. "Finisterre" is on Oysterband and June Tabor´s "Freedom and rain" (1990) and the super sad "The Grey Funnel Line" is on June Tabor og Maddy Prior´s "Silly Sisters"(1976).

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Håkon Kornstad recently released the follow up to the fantastic album "Elise"(Compunctio 2008). On "Mitt hjerte alltid vanker - 1" (meaning something like"My heart is always wandering") (Compundio 2011) they play some of the same songs as on "Elise", but this album is different, more jazzy perhaps, partly because veteran drummer Jon Christensen is participating. The material was recorded live during the Oslo Jazz Festival in 2009, and is highly recommended.
Part two will be released on the same label this spring (only as mp3s).

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Håkon Kornstad played at the Bergen Jazzforum Friday 18th February. As a duo the expression was more like what they did on "Elise", totally acoustic, with candle lights on the tables and good storytelling between the tunes. An absolutely brilliant concert!

Finally they did "Akk Värmeland du sköna" (aka "Dear Old Stockholm"), and Håkon Kornstad did some fantastic singing, opera style like Jussi Björling. I swear I saw some tears among the audience.

It´s probably not a joke, even if Spekulation claims that the new EP "Smoke`Em If You Got `Em", with a mix of Nick Drake, Jason Parker Quartet and Jay-Z, mentioned several times in the blog already, will be released February 29th.
The first video is ready, and the EP will be ready for download the first day of March (my guess!).

You should probably be just a little bit careful here, if you prefer your Nick Drake only as the sad man´s soundtrack.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

I just have to post this one, the day after I had a post on "Kind of blue"!
I don´t think I have heard about Æthenor before, but the band members come from bands like Ulver and sunn o))): Stephen O´Malley, Daniel O´Sullivan, Kristoffer Rygg and Steve Noble.
They recently released "En form for blå" (meaning "A Kind of Blue" in Norwegian) (VHF 2011), and it´s dark and heavy stuff, and pretty hard to place in a category or genre. Check over at The Liminal, where they name drop Supersilent too.
So you have got to listen for yourselves, and see if you might believe that "En form for blå" will be the new "Kind of blue"?

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

"Kind of blue" is probably the jazz album owned by most people who don´t listen to jazz regularly, and the one album that most jazz fans have several editions of. "Kind of blue" was released in 1959 with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb and Bill Evans.

The book "The Blue Moment" by Richard Williams (Faber & Faber 2009) tracks Miles steps up to "Kind of Blue" and the modal jazz (meetings with Gil Evans og George Russell), and also the impact this album had (and still has) later on. Wright follows some of the musicians on the album (Coltrane, Evans), and finds traces of "Kind of Blue" and Miles´work in minimalism (Terry Riley and others), soul, disco, funk, rock (Velvet Underground and Soft Machine), Acid Jazz (Ronny Jordan), ECM and Rune Grammofon.
I´ll be honest with you, and admit that I didn´t always see the connections that clearly, as Wright gets a bit off the tracks, but I´m sure you will!
This is an interesting and entertaining book!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

OK, I know, streaming is the big thing, and you hardly buy records any more. That´s OK, just you be cool. How about this one then: A very good split 12" with (one of this blog´s favorites) Svarte Greiner (Erik Skodvin) and Le Corbeau (new to me) (Fysisk Format 2010)?

Svarte Greiner do some dark and dirty ambient (again!) on "Drunk", "Road" og "Tree" (a Twitter short story of titles) and Le Corbeau play some kind of surfpsychobilly, but please note, they also do "She´s a mystery to me" by Roy Orbison.
You may (and should) try to get it from Tiger.

The sticker that was attached to the cover tells it all: "No stream, no CD, no mp3, no fun"!

Monday, February 14, 2011

I had a couple of posts on The Jason Parker Quartet in 2010, on their plans to record jazz versions of Nick Drake songs. I don´t think we´ll have to wait too long before the album is ready.

As if jazz and Nick Drake was not enough, Parker sendt his recorded material to "rapper/hip-hop guru" Spekulation, who mixed Jay-Z ("Can´t knock the hustle") with the mellow Drake ("When the day is done").

Sunday, February 13, 2011

On DailyMotion you may watch several videos from a live performance of Orchestre National de Jazz´s "Around Robert Wyatt" project. In this post: "The song" with Robert Wyatt´s voice and "Del Mondo" sung by Irène Jacob.

Thursday evening I saw the duo Donkey Monkey at Bergen Jazzforum. Eve Reiser (piano, prepared piano, voice) and Yuko Oshima (dr, sampler, voice) played a strange but nice mix of contemporary classical, free jazz and rock & roll (true!), and the audience loved it. They played music from their "newborn" album "Hanakana"(Umlaut 2011).

Donkey Monkey did a version of Carla Bley´s "Can´t get my motor to start", taken from the album "Nick Mason´s fictitious sports", on which Robert Wyatt is singing on most of the tracks (but not on the motor song). In my opinion this is a great album, and I hereby include it in my famous The classic series!
I mentioned the album in a previous post called "Robert Wyatt: The next step", but now it´s up to you to find it yourselves. Pink Floyd fans will love "Hot River", and everyone will boo to "Boo to you too!"

Friday, February 11, 2011

Jenny Hval (ex-Rockettothesky) uploaded two new videos on Vimeo. You may see "Blood Flight" and "How Gentle" from the album "Viscera", to be released on Rune Grammofon February 18th.
The videos are made by Håvard Volden and Jenny Hval.

Alan Licht has a piece on Robert Wyatt in the February issue of Artforum.
I can´t find the magazine in Bergen (or Norway?). If some of you have read the piece, is it worth making the effort of trying to get it?

Thursday, February 10, 2011

The folk singer Norma Waterson has been hospitalized for the last three months. In addition to health aspects, this is also tough on the private economy, so I suggest you head over to Musical Traditions´ "Norma Waterson Benefit Events Page" for info on benefit concerts, and how you may even add some individual donations.

Let´s see a video where Norma Waterson is singing with husband Martin Carthy, daughter Eliza Carthy, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks and Danny Thompson. "There ain´t no sweet man that´s worth the salt of my tears" is on the album called "Norma Waterson" (Hannibal 1996). Highly recommended!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Yesterday I attended the release concert for Sigbjørn Apeland´s harmonium solo album "Glossolalia" (Hubro 2011) in Bergen. Both during the live event and on the album, Apeland is improvising and making what he calls acoustic ambient. Noise from different parts of the instrument (like pedals and swells) blends in a beautiful way with the sacral music.
Some people call this old church instrument "psalm bike", but you may call it what you like, the music is fantastic.

And don´t you forget "1982" (NORCD 2009), on which Sigbjørn Apeland plays harmonium together with Knut Økland (fiddle) and Øyvind Skarbø (drums).

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Monday, February 7, 2011

Paal Nilssen-Love must be one of Norway´s hardest working, and hardest travelling musicians! Here he is in videos from two of this years concerts. First a recording of The Thing (PNL, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Mats Gustafsson) in Australia, and next a total blow out with Lasse Marhaug and Jim O´Rourke in Japan.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Friday night I heard The Core again in Bergen, playing their up to date, Coltrane inspired jazz. They were super tight and full of energy, and had the audience both concentrating and shouting. You seldom see a member of the audience jump up to shake the pianist´s hand two seconds after his last note played. You should probably think twice before you do that to certain piano players, but The Core´s Erlend Slettevoll seemed OK about it! The rest of the members of The Core are Jørgen Mathisen (sax), Kjetil Møster (sax), Steinar Raknes (bass) and Espen Aalberg (drums).

See them live if you can, but check out their albums too. For different lineups see The Core´s web site, and please note their bootleg section too, where they upload concert recordings.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Yesterday I had never heard about The Caribbean. The band members are Matthew Byars, Michael Kentoff and Dave Jones. They end up in this blog because they made a mixtape for the magazine Magnet, where Robert Wyatt´s "Sea Song" is mixed with among others Dire Straits, The Who and Thelonious Monk.
I´m quite sure Wyatt is happy being in the company of Monk at least!

And The Caribbean seems to have nice songs too."The go from tactical" is a bit like Prefab Sprout?

Thursday, February 3, 2011

If you should happen to visit Bergen in the spring, check out the Bergenfest program. It is happening 27th April - 1st May.
The program is alright I guess (*being positive*), and let me just choose three acts to see: Ron Sexsmith, The Handsome Family and Loudon Wainwright III.

Here is a nice Dutch interview (with songs) with Loudon from 2004.
"I´m the oldest new Bob Dylan".

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Rune Grammofon´s new release is Phaedra´s "The Sea".
Phaedra is Ingvild Langgård, who made all the songs and plays guitar, piano and more. She has got 10 musicians joining on different instruments, and the music is some kind of dark ("Death will come", "The first to die" an so on), but very beautiful, modern folk.
Some reviewers claim that the songs are a bit too alike each other, but I don´t mind too much. The artist may not like it, but for me this works fine as ambient, or something like that, just music floating in the room. It´s nice stuff!

Some moments on the album made me think of Rockettothesky, or Jenny Hval (and please check out "Medea" from 2008, if you haven´t heard it). Jenny Hval is the next one out on Rune. Just a coincidence I guess.

And of course Kim Hiorthøy made the sleeve.

Phaedra recently played at the record store Big Dipper in Oslo, and you may listen to two songs in the video below. I just have to guess that Lise Sørensen is playing violin, since she is the violinist on the album.